marketing, mobile-apps, software, distributionA lot of software startups use these kind of strategies. Plus some also sponsor installable software and while you are installing X software, you are also unknowingly Y,Z software as well.
Are these viable methods for getting the word out about a mobile app? Does these techniques actually work to get users or does it only piss them off?
(Assuming the content and syntax are all legal and the post target is in the target market of the product so they are potentially interested in the product.)
First off, if you do send unsolicited bulk email then do it right. Sending such emails is outright illegal in some jurisdictions; for instance in Europe. In the US, the Can Spam Act lets you do so with a couple of provisions. In particular the following:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
As to whether it works, the amount of spam that used to get sent suggests that yes it does – or at least it used to – if you’re selling snake oil products or stuff of dubious legality. Modern spam detection algorithms may have put that trend to an end though.
I do not think outright spam is what you had in mind when you wrote your question though, so let’s switch to things that actually successful companies do which IMHO (as an end user) merit the label of spammy promotional techniques.
I’ve never tried this one, but I sure as hell despise the companies that do it. Particularly when I need to clean up a friend or relative’s computer. I’d gather it works, but I can’t imagine it’s viable unless you’re selling crapware.
Sending an incessant stream of personalized emails to unregistered users like Facebook or LinkedIn do is not considered spam, even on this side of the pond.
It works. And it’s arguably viable. And it arguably pisses users off if done improperly or excessively.
With respect to that last point, note that there are right and wrong ways to do it. For instance, there’s no shortage of online complaint about Facebook and LinkedIn emails. Complaints about DropBox emails are rarer – littleadv chimes in to suggest that they’re every bit as obnoxious, though, so it may be related to the fact that most users actually sign up. At any rate, if you offer genuine value to your invites’ recipients and don’t send them so many requests that you annoy them, you should be fine.
The data here is mixed in my experience.
This much is common to most of these services: while posting things in an automated way is in line with terms of services and happens all the time, actually interacting with users in an automated way can get you banned. In other words, you can use a bot to post content, but you should not use a bot to like, retweet, follow, etc. in an effort to grab users’ attention. Check the terms of services and don’t go too deep into the gray zone.
Automatically posting streams of stuff to social networks sometimes works. Users notice that it’s automated and quickly ignore you unless you’re posting stuff they really want to see – as in pics, short videos, or news feeds they’d rather be following on Twitter than in an RSS reader. Try it, and you’ll quickly find out if this works for you. It is viable when it works.
Interacting with users works surprisingly well. Twitter users tend to reciprocate when you follow them, for instance, or at least visit your twitter feed out of curiosity. Automating this is, I repeat, against terms of services. So *cough* keep the level of automations low enough that it can be reasonably perceived as being done by a human. ;-)
This was very lucrative as is until Google cracked down on duplicate content, content spinning, and other automated content generators. So it worked, but was not viable.
Nowadays, it’s still periodically used to produce joke sites with great link-bait value – i.e. for SEO ranking purposes. This is viable.
Google is still not perfect at catching these things, by the way. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, a black hatter customized the Dada Engine (see e.g. the Postmodernism Generator) or something to that effect in order to produce entire sites for ephemeral – and therefor not viable – SEO gains.
Owing to the fact that you’ll need tons of accounts, each with legit looking followers or friends, this is against these social networks’ terms of use, and socially despicable behavior.
But I feel this answer wouldn’t be complete without a note on the black hat SEO juice you can get from automated link generation.
Start with perfectly legit PR and white hat SEO: push PR articles in the wild, get journalists to write stories on you with a link to your site, push guest posts in the wild, etc. Then use black hat SEO to give SEO juice to anything that references your site. It works if done right. But it’s super spammy, it’s ephemeral, and it can backlash if done wrong, so not viable in the long run.
Why would spammers keep doing something that doesn’t work?
It’s common sense “it works” – and it is also common sense people don’t like it, or they wouldn’t be trying to stop it by taking people to court and putting them in jail.
Please do not spam people.
Well it depends entirely on your definition of mass mail. I worked for a food wholesaler who used to send daily emails to nearly their entire customer base on their daily deals. Amazon send me an email nearly every day saying what’s on offer. That works quite well in my experience. Sending 5 emails a day about irrelevant subjects won’t work however, and would be considered spamming.
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